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Monday, 25 June 2012

Sorry for the lack of posting! It's been especially busy at work and I haven't quite had time to post.
I attemped day 2 of my challenge, which was water marbling. Water marbling is for sure a hit or miss with me and, well, this time was definitely a miss.
I'm not even gonna show you. It's that bad. I have trouble finding the time to get every nail just right.

What I am going to show you today is some new sets I'm putting for up for sale on Etsy! I love doing my own nails but I also love watching people wear my designs as well. I also love making sets because it's a fun creative outlet for me when I don't want to change my own nails every day.

This set reminds me of confetti! I took inspiration from Chalkboard Nails for this set, which you can see here. I picked out some sweet and girly colors instead and got this neat confetti look. Love it.

Some classic red & leopard print. I actually got this idea from a girlfriend. I had painted her a plain red set & a leopard print set. She lost a nail so she used a spare leopard print nail on her ring finger and I was like, why didn't I think of that?

My favorite of the day. Another set with inspiration taken from Chalkboard Nails! Sarah did a wonderful tutorial on what she calls a Fishtail mani and I couldn't wait to try it out. You can see her tutorial here.

Thanks for all your great mani's lately, Sarah! You are awesome inspiration.

You can purchase my nail sets on Etsy here. I'm constantly restocking and adding new designs, which I will continue to show you all here. I am also putting up a new custom listing! You can request whatever nails your heart desires for $10.00 + shipping. Leopard print, watercolor, you name it.
I'm not very good and drawing people though, I don't recommend it. Ha!

Monday, 18 June 2012

I love nail art challenges, they are good for keeping my brain going. Coming up with ideas for new mani's can be hard sometimes. I often get stuck in a leopard print rut. These are great to get me out of my rut!

Day one is glitter. I told you guys in my last post that I was back on the glitter train, so this was pretty good timing for me. I went to my local mall and popped into Claire's because I had been hearing a lot about their affordable polishes.

Check out all that glitter! I was definitely happy to find this. This set was $10.99 for 5 glitter minis (which are actually more like half-sizes, not minis). Super cheap! I was a little worried they would apply like glue, we are talking about Claire's here, they are no professional beauty company. However, I was pleasantly surprised!

This is one coat of China Glaze First Mate with one coat of this unnamed multi-colored glitter from the Precious Metals Claire's collection. Yes, I did just say one coat. This was awesome to apply. All of that glitter spread perfectly on my nail in one coat. I was shocked. Definitely a glitter packed polish.

Here's a sunlight photo. I love the color scheme of this glitter. I can't decide if it reminds me more of peacocks or Mardi Gras. I couldn't stop staring at my fingers while wearing this. I looked like I had jewels for nails.

Most of the glitter is green but there's plenty of purple and blue in there too. This is so exciting. I think everyone should own this set of glitters. This polish alone is worth the ten bucks.

Are you guys still on the glitter train? Or did you hop on the gradient train? Nail trends come and go but chunky glitter will always be one of my favorites.

If you would like do the challenge click here to see the daily requirements and drop me a comment with a link to your blog so I can check out your daily creations!

It's official, I'm back on my glitter obsession. I bought some indie glitters, some Claire's glitters, and well, I wanted to use some of my old ones too. This combo makes for a perfect sunny summer mani.

This is OPI The It Color with Kleancolor Chunky Copper as a glitter topper. The It Color is the perfect yellow for me. I'm really pale and I have no yellow in my skin tone at all, so if I wear too much yellow or too bright yellows I look extra pink... and white. But this yellow is a perfect golden hue that I think would look good on anyone.

Here's a sunlight photo of this beautiful combo. Chunky Copper has a tiny bit of a tinted base, so it made this mani look even more golden. It has large, medium and tiny hexagonal glitters that are fairly easy to fish out of the bottle. The only downside is that it is so thick, as are all of my other Kleancolor glitters. This took at least an hour to dry. It's worth it in the end but make sure you go pee and make no plans before you start with any Kleancolor glitters.

Sorry this is a little out of focus, I didn't notice until now. This is in the shade. Shows how the glitter shines from orange to yellow in different lights. Doesn't it match with The It Color well? It was worth waiting for the dry time for sure to see these pretty glitters shine at me.
I love summer manis! Bright is the best!

Sunday, 17 June 2012

Polishes definitely come and go and I always come across a new favorite every once in a while. Especially at this time of year when neons are popping up everywhere you look. Well I was wondering what my actual favorite polishes were and I wanted to share them with you guys!
Prepare for some picture heavy swatch spam.

This is OPI Gargantuan Green Grape. However, when I look at this color I don't see grape. I see honey dew melons. You know, the blue-ish green color on the inside, this is the exact color. This is a light green creme that applies horribly streaky. You need 3 coats for full opacity. At the same time the color pay off is more than worth it for me.

This is China Glaze Turned Up Turquoise. It's a neon so it dries matte as you can see here. Topcoat makes it shiny but doesn't change the color, it's as bright matte as it is shiny. This is one of my favorite colors so it's always been a clear favorite. The application is also a dream. The first coat is sometimes streaky but you only need two coats and it dries in a flash.

China Glaze Make Some Noise. This is from the new Poptastic collection and is an awesome bright color. It's a reddish-pink that covers beautifully in two coats. I bought a few others from the Poptastic collection but this one definitely stole my heart.

This is the best red in my collection, a must have for everyone. OPI Comet Loves Cupid is an oldie from the 2009 Holiday Wishes Collection. I actually got it for free when I started my job at the salon that I do hair at 2 years ago and it was one of my first OPIs. This is 1 coat, that's it that's all. You can see a bit of my nail line in the photos but not in person. Perfect. Red. I can say no more.

Last but not least is China Glaze Ruby Pumps. This is a favorite across the world as far as I can tell. It's a red jelly base with red glitter and an awesome color payoff in 2 coats. It's a pain to photograph, hence why I only have one picture (I took about 300, this was the only good one). This is a must have for all red lovers. Go get it.

Monday, 11 June 2012

I wanted to start a weekly tradition for myself to keep me inspired, and I kept searching for what people were doing for their weekly challenges. Then I thought to myself, what if I do a weekly inspired mani? Inspired by a photo, pattern, tv show, jewelry, anything! So here is my first Inspiration Monday! What a good way to make mondays better.

This week's mani is inspired by my iPhone background. I have this little app that I can download background off, and all the ones I download are always floral. Because I'm obsessed with floral.

Here is my inspiration photo. Pretty, huh? So bright and cheery.

And here is my inspiration mani! The base color is Joe Fresh Cement, which is an awesome medium grey jelly that paints wonderfully. I did the lines with a white NYC polish (it has no name). The reason I dotted the lines is because they are so subtle in the photo and there's no way I could've got them thin enough to look the same. I like the way they look dotted.

I did the flower accent nail by first painting a white background for them like in the picture. Then I put a blob of Zoya Reneé for the pink flower, China Glaze Breakin' for the orange flower and China Glaze For Audrey for the blue flower. I made them look a little more like flowers by swirling a little white on top of them. The vines were done with OPI Who The Shrek Are You? and a dotting tool.

What do you guys think about this mani? And would any of you like to partake in Inspiration Monday? Leave a comment and let me know :)

Sunday, 10 June 2012

I just recently joined the group Adventures in Stamping on Facebook and this is my first contribution to their weekly challenges! The theme this week was Hot Hot Hot, so i interpreted that as bright neons. Summer is the perfect time for hot!

For my base I did a gradient using two extra hot colors. The orange is China Glaze Breakin' and the pinkish-red is China Glaze Pool Party. This mani is so bright it freaked out my camera a little bit! Hard to get it to photograph correctly.

Pool Party is from the 2010 Poolside collection full of the most blinding neons I have ever seen hit the polish market. It is basically a neon barbie pink with a slight red hue. All Lacquered Up probably has the most accurate photo (and photos of the rest of the collection) which you can see here.

This is probably the most color accurate photo I managed to take. For the stamping I used BM-208 and Sally Hansen Silver Sweep. The stamping doesn't look quite so translucent in person. The neon kinda over-shined the stamping in all my photos.

Well, it is 20 minutes to 12:00am here. Just made the deadline for Stamping Sunday. Still counts to me! If you'd like to join Adventures in Stamping click here and request to join! I hope all the lovely ladies in the group like my hot manicure!

First of all, welcome to my actual blog! Having a tumblr is fun for sharing photos, but I love talking with my followers and getting feedback. That's not something you get very often on tumblr. So here i am! Capitalizing my sentences and everything. Ha ha :)

Anyways. Last night I reached a milestone. I went to the casino for the first time! Well, that's a lie. I actually gambled for the first time. It is so glittery and rainbow-y in there. I had to pay tribute with something eye-catching, but quick at the same time because I was pressed for time.

What could be a better fit for "glitter rainbow" than Deborah Lippmann Happy Birthday? This gem is a pretty penny so I did one accent nail to savor it. My base color is China Glaze Hyper Haute from the Tronica collection (which I love, one of their coolest collections for sure). It is a purple-magenta polish with a subtle holographic effect. I think the subtlety is my favorite thing about it. The holographic almost makes it looked textured. The above photo was taken with camera flash.

This photo is without camera flash. I wanted to use all natural light but it is a very rainy, dreary day over here in good, old Alberta. No sunshine for miles. So this is a mix of natural light and a table lamp that happened to be near by. Look at all the colors in Happy Birthday. Just like a casino.

Here's a close-up of the glitter. Excuse the micro-sized hair on my nail, definitely didn't notice that before! Happy Birthday has the perfect consistency, it spreads on the nail without any trouble and the glitter disperses evenly. You also get an even 50/50 or larger and smaller glitter which I like. Some of my other glitters I have to fight to get the bigger glitters out of the bottle. Well worth the $25.

I was wondering while applying Hyper Haute, It kinda looks like OPI DS Extravagance. So I decided to do a comparison.

They are similar, but not dupes. Extravagance is more purple and slightly darker than Hyper Haute. It also has more holographic glitter.

So the bad news is I lost $40 last night on the slots. However, it was a super fun time and I got to watch my best girl friend win $120! And of course, my nails looked great doing it!

About Me

I am a hair stylist & manicurist from Edmonton, Alberta with a die hard obsession for the beauty industry, especially nail art. I love discovering new designs, techniques and polishes. It's one of my favorite creative outlets and I love sharing it with all my friends, family and fans ♥